


That Stubborn Light

by fearoflying



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Breastfeeding, David Tennant in a Suit, Delirium, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Lactation Kink, Olivia Colman in a suit, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Season 2/Episode 5, Slight AU in which Ellie is..., Tenderness, Vaginal Sex, fatigue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-18 16:43:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21580765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fearoflying/pseuds/fearoflying
Summary: Over next door in Good Omens fandom there's a lot of wild, transgressive stuff happening. It's pretty exciting. After reading the dazzling "Feed Me Your Love" by viksherenqueer I was kinda like... Huh. Then I went down a rabbit hole that landed me at an old, beautiful HP fic, "Rest Your Head Close to My Heart" by pauraque, and I thought... I want this for Hardy and Miller. So bad. So this is what happened.Takes place toward the end of Season 2, Episode 5. Canon-compliant up to and untilthishappens. It's pretty hard to imagine them proceeding as usual after this, but repression is a powerful force, so it's theoretically possible.Also, I didn't write it to be a prologue toLove is the Law, but there's no real reason it couldn't be, at least in spirit.
Relationships: Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller
Comments: 18
Kudos: 99





	That Stubborn Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [viksherenqueer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/viksherenqueer/gifts), [pauraque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pauraque/gifts).



Hardy let himself back in to his little blue shack, burdened with bread, milk, tea, and the other staples he’d long let go unreplaced. He scanned the chaotic sitting room hoping for a look of approval from Miller, but she was nowhere to be seen. He’d only been gone a half hour, she wouldn’t have left… no, wee Fred’s pram was still here. 

Crossing the kitchen to deposit his provisions on the counter, he peeked in the pantry: no sign. Back amid the cartons and towers of paper in the sitting room, he heard a rustling, followed by a quiet sigh, from his bedroom. The door was ajar. He stepped to it lightly and pushed it open with fingertips, not wishing to startle Miller, nor to wake the boy. 

“I’ve got tea an’…” 

The words quit of their own accord as he glimpsed a dark, swollen nipple pop, glistening, from Fred’s sleeping mouth. Miller’s nipple. Miller’s full, pale breast. She looked up at him in surprise, but the manic, sleepless energy from earlier was gone from her eyes. She was seated on the foot of his rumpled bed, cradling her son, and in the dim, curtained room she was a vision of sensuous peace. Hardy swayed dangerously. 

If he hadn’t spent the entire sodding night on his feet, pacing the cliffs and the empty streets of Broadchurch, if his poor, pumping heart wasn’t threatening to quit altogether at this sight, he might have had some idea of what to do. He might have imagined what to say to fill the deafening, stretching silence. He might have turned and left the room, or at least averted his gaze. As it was, he stared at her, arms limp by his sides, unable to hide the raw want on his face or the color rising in his cheeks. She gazed back at him, making no move to cover her breast, nor to move the child. He wished, a little hysterically, that she would make a stupid joke and save his life. 

When she finally, mercifully, broke the silence, her voice was a sober hush.

“We were going to wean him when we got home from Florida. We thought, you know, Detective Inspector pumping in her office, bit much. Then you got the job, and we caught the Danny call, and I didn’t consider it again. First it was just too much all at once, didn’t want to change my little routine. Now I think I need it more than he does.”

Miller looked down at the boy in her arms, and, suddenly released from eye contact, Hardy slumped against the doorframe, taking deep breaths. She stood and placed Fred, with infinite tenderness, back into the nest of blankets she’d created, then turned and stepped toward Hardy. He felt her approach as a heat rising up the front of his body, and he stayed absolutely still, holding on to the jamb. Her shirt and bra-cup were still undone to reveal her left breast; it swayed. He had no idea what she was thinking; he couldn’t even say what he was thinking. She laid a hand on his shoulder to guide him out, and she might as well have caressed him right between the legs. 

She closed the bedroom door behind them, walked to the sofa and sat. He stayed frozen on the threshold. She looked down to refasten her bra, and for a fleeting moment he thought this whole strange interlude was over and life would return to as-it-ever-was. Back to the case and the trial and the innocent jousting of workmates. 

Then Miller looked back up at him, a heartbreaking question in her eyes as she pulled her shirt to the right and unfastened the other cup of her bra. The morning light painted the curve of her swollen breast rosy, and the nipple a candy pink. She didn’t beckon, didn’t even breathe as far as he could tell, but Hardy felt her pulling him across the room on his shaky colt-legs. He didn’t fall down exactly, but did close the final distance between them on his knees, as if to an altar. He stopped short of touching her, not at all sure of the rules, but he was close enough to smell her sensible soap and the bodily sweetness he only now understood. She leaned back to rest against the sofa, widening her legs, and he moved in between them. He was in her orbit, spiraling closer. The trepidation had left her face, and she invited him toward her exposed breast with a glance and a smile. 

Right before he made contact she whispered, “he fell asleep before he did the second side.” His lips curved up as they met her taut flesh. She gasped and he froze. Then her hands coaxed his head gently closer and he began to… what was he doing, exactly? He licked experimentally, tenderly for a few moments, then slid a hand inside her bra to lift and hold her to his mouth. 

Was he teasing like a lover? Was he suckling like an infant? Had he ever in his life done this before? Hardy wasn’t sure. Certainly not with Tess; Daisy had struggled to latch, and the mounting pressure not to starve the baby had superceded any other feelings they might have shared at that time. Had his mother nursed him? No one ever said, and no one alive could tell him now. 

His lips closed around her nipple as his hand gently squeezed her, and he fit her deeper in his mouth. Some primal intuition told him how to suck. Miller sighed and stroked his hair as her milk started to flow, settling in and pulling him closer. The taste, when it hit his tongue, was a revelation. He could hear her heart beating, feel her lungs filling against him, the deep rhythm of her body soothing his own, more frantic pace. Her soft exhales ruffled his hair, and he lost himself in her lap for hushed, timeless moments. He might have drowsed. So might she have. He could feel his cock thick between his thighs as he rocked ever so slightly against the sofa, but there was no urgency. She cradled his head and he drank her down in little hot sips until they slowed, stopped, and broke gently apart. 

He sat back on his heels and regarded her, mouth slack, awestruck. They were on the other side of fatigue, in a new, unwritten day. Maybe this was it, they’d done this strange thing together and they’d never speak of it again. He hoped it wasn’t, but even this worry seemed remote. A kind of peace pervaded his exhausted, aroused body. When she smiled at him his tired heart leaped; not the end! A beginning! But even as she reached forward and brought her thumb to his mouth, the easy peace in him persisted. She stroked his lips, the corners of his mouth, his cheek and jaw, before drawing his face to hers. 

The kiss, their first kiss, felt precociously intimate with the taste of her milk on his tongue. He rose up on his knees to meet her more deeply. To Hardy it seemed as if somehow they’d always been kissing, been breathing shared breath, been nourishing each other. His head was spinning, but in the good way for once. His hands fumbled down her shirt buttons then caressed and grasped her belly, her supple waist. She undid her own flies, suddenly a bit urgent, and lifted her hips. Always her intuitive partner, he pulled her wrinkled slacks down her legs and cast them to the floor. The scent of her arousal made his cock jump, and when he looked down he could see her peachy knickers were dark and wet between her soft white thighs. 

“Can I… ye want me ta…” his fingers toyed with the elastic at her hips as he searched for a coherent end to this hopeful sentence. She just nodded furiously, so he pulled the knickers off, dragging her hips forward at the same time. Miller’s cunt was spread before him. Miller’s beautiful, wild, soaking cunt. He gazed so long that she looked up at him with a worried frown. He grinned back at her, ran a finger lightly along her lips, where soft dark curls met swollen pink slickness, then bowed his head and set to. 

Years without occasion had not dulled his finesse, he thought a bit proudly, if her rocking hips and stifled moaning were any indication. He had always loved this; it felt to Hardy like the closest he could ever come to really knowing another person. There were no formulas or tricks, just observation, investigation, persistence. This wouldn’t be a long investigation; he could feel her trembling like a leaf, ready to fall. His mouth was already a bit tired (blinding arousal as he thought on _why_ ), so his fingers kept up the rhythm his tongue had set as he began to kiss her wetly from thigh to thigh. 

Miller had covered her mouth, but she began to whisper urgently through her fingers, “…inside, inside, give me more…” Never letting up on her clit, he sunk two fingers into her, terribly slowly, then curled and dragged them back out, same speed. He did this only a handful more times before she was bucking against his face, grabbing his ears, pulling him deeper. She was silent as she came, but he felt the explosion of energy rush from her core through her limbs. He softened his pressure but didn’t stop til she pushed his forehead away with the heel of her hand. 

He watched her catch her breath with her eyes closed, ready to read her expression when she regained her composure. It took a minute. As her eyes blinked open an incredulous smile spread across her face and she pushed herself up to sitting. Her arms were half bound by the shirt still around her elbows, and her breasts were jumbled together fetchingly by the tangled bra. She looked down at herself, then at him, still wearing the pale blue shirt and black slacks he’d dressed in more than 24 hours ago. She quirked an eyebrow; his fingers flew to his cuffs, then fast down his buttons before stripping off his shirt and undershirt. 

Miller finished undressing herself while staring at his naked chest, and he could feel his heart begin to race clumsily again. Despite the vulnerable look in her eyes there was a basic forthrightness in her movements, a confidence to her very being, that both aroused and soothed him in its familiarity. She kissed him deeply, sharing the taste, then peered down at the bulge in his trousers. He bit his lip.

“Are you allowed to, you know… in your condition?”

The part of him that would have supplied his habitual response was either unconscious or still rendered speechless at the sight of her naked before him. What he ultimately managed to say was, “maybe if I’m sittin….” 

But first he stood up heavily and stumbled to the bathroom. She was on her feet when he returned, looking lost but lovely in the middle of his sitting room. He held up a lone foil condom packet with an imminent expiry date.

“Oh, well done, Hardy. I would have clean forgotten.” 

He looked up sharply: his surname in her mouth had disturbed the calm surface of this dreamtime. She returned his gaze uncertainly. He stepped close and wrapped his arms around her, feeling gooseflesh rise on her skin. 

“Alec.” He whispered in her ear. “Alec, ok?”

“Yeah, all right. Alec,” she whispered back. “Now you.”

It took him a moment to find the name, then the courage to speak it. It sounded rough in his throat.

“Ellie.”

“Again.”

“Ellie.”

Her hands slid down his back, then around his waistband to unfasten his belt and flies.

“Yes, Ellie.”

She undressed him tenderly, giving his cock a teasing stroke as she freed it from his pants. Then she guided him to sit back on the sofa and watched him as he tore the wrapper and unrolled the condom onto his patiently straining cock. He let his head fall back against the sofa and tried to calm his breath, steady his heart as she moved on him, climbing onto his lap, eclipsing the sun that streamed through her hair and outlined her soft form. 

They shuffled a little forward and back to find an agreeable meeting place, then she took him in hand and slid the head of him inside her. Terribly slowly. He groaned so loudly she clamped her hand over his mouth, nodding impatiently toward the bedroom. He raised his eyebrows helplessly, but swallowed his next groan as she sunk down farther on his cock. 

Hardy was almost overcome. Even a rubber wasn’t enough to temper this first contact with another’s body after years of lonesome wilderness. And not just anyone’s body; this was a thought he’d never allowed himself suddenly made vivid, naked flesh. He didn’t come, but it was a near thing; when she’d sheathed him fully, he grabbed her hips and held her still in his lap, breath ragged and eyes pleading. She took pity, smoothing his hair and kissing his forehead, only accidentally tormenting him with the play of her internal muscles as she leaned to him. 

Her bare breasts were all he could see; they looked less taut than before, softer, but her nipples were still bright and swollen. He craned his neck a little and licked at one, felt her cunt tighten around him. He muted his groan with her breast. She buried her groan in his hair. He teased and sucked her tender flesh, slowly releasing the grip on her hips and letting her move on him. Then he found her clit again with his thumb, buried his face between her breasts, and surrendered to her rhythm. He had a momentary vision of himself as a stone, turning in the tide. He felt awash in her, inundated, gasping. Then he was tumbling irresistibly, drowning upward, toward the light, pressed against her heart and crying out, crying. 

She tumbled after him, a last few thrusts of her hips and then with a sigh her full weight was on him, pressing him back against the sofa. He coaxed them over together til they were lying down face to face, legs still twisted together, soggy condom unceremoniously slapping his thigh as it exited her body. He had just enough time to pull it off his retreating cock, tie it in a knot and toss it on the floor before the velvet curtain of exhaustion dropped on him. It was so heavy and black that he would have been frightened if he weren’t so tired. He could feel Miller pulling the blanket from the back of the sofa over them both. Her arm wrapped around him and pulled him warmly against her. He tucked his head under her chin and slept. 

***

The smell of toast woke him up. Or was it the sound of wee Fred babbling? The angle of the light had fully reversed, filtering through the curtained window behind him. And he was alone on the couch. He sat up slowly, pulling the blanket around his shoulders, an unnameable churning in his belly. Suddenly she popped her head in from the kitchen.

“There’s tea for you, Hardy. And I made a bit of toast. Then we ought to get down to work; day’s wasting.”

The utter normality of her tone would have made him doubt his memory if he hadn’t been naked under the scratchy wool. And he could see the slight effort it took for her to keep her eyes on his face. He looked down at himself on her behalf, taking in his bare feet and skinny shins before meeting her eyes again with a rueful half-smile. He stood and shuffled to the kitchen wrapped in the blanket, took the tea from her with both hands. 

“Thanks, Millah.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Shearwater's superb Backchannels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teM6CN6VRXQ
> 
> _The night is here_  
>  _But still is_  
>  _spinning out stars in its wake_  
>  _And that stubborn light_  
>  _Pools in your heart_  
>  _Warm and nacreous, baby_  
>  _The milk of sighs_  
>  _And dreams_


End file.
